One Forgotten Night Read online

  Nina came to a decision. She would be flying back from Colombia in a few days. As soon as she returned she would call Mike Novalis. That would give her time to decide what she wanted to say. She had no idea how he would respond to her, but at least she would know that she had tried.

  Nina’s mood brightened. She had a plan. She felt suddenly hopeful and energetic. Her apartment seemed sterile and boring. Outside, the late-afternoon sunlight had faded. Lights had begun twinkling in the autumnal twilight, and the evening air seemed full of promise. Nina decided to go for a drive.

  * * *

  By Sunday afternoon Mike was almost ready to pull the plug on Operation Dennison. It had become well-nigh impossible to justify his stakeout of Nina as anything remotely resembling police work. With no evidence of any crime, he was starting to feel more than a little like a Peeping Tom.

  Nina was in her apartment. I’ll hang around until dark, he decided, and then I’ll go home. And stay there. Just then Marta’s red Jag pulled up, and a few moments later Nina came downstairs carrying a gym bag and climbed into Marta’s car.

  Oh, what the hell, Mike thought, and after allowing several other cars to come between the Jag and the Grand Am he pulled away from the curb to follow them. But as he was turning the corner a familiar flash of silver in the rearview mirror caught his eye. It was Julien Duchesne’s Mercedes, swinging onto Nina’s block. Mike grinned. Julien had just missed Nina. Or maybe, he thought suddenly, Julien had waited until she was gone to show up.

  Mike made a split-second decision and gave up on the women. He knew where they were going, anyway; he’d tailed them to Marta’s gym twice during the week. He drove his car into the first driveway he came to, hoping the occupants of the house weren’t home. It would be hard to stay inconspicuous if they came bustling out indignantly to chase him away.

  Luck was with him. Nobody rousted him from the driveway, and through the shifting leaves of a ginkgo tree he could see Nina’s building. Duchesne’s car pulled into Nina’s lot and was hidden from his view by the corner of her building.

  Mike waited for Duchesne to appear at Nina’s front door. Five minutes later he was still waiting. He rummaged in his overcrowded glove compartment and found a pair of sunglasses and an old baseball cap with a green bottle and the words Grab a Heinie stenciled on it. Not much style, but it might keep Duchesne from recognizing him.

  He drove slowly past Nina’s address, scanning her parking lot. Duchesne’s car was there, and behind it Mike could see a bit of the rear bumper of Nina’s brown car. Otherwise the lot was empty; Nina’s fellow tenants were probably all out enjoying the Indian summer afternoon. Julien Duchesne was nowhere in sight. Mike slowed to a crawl, but then a honk from the irate motorist behind him forced him to speed up; he didn’t want to risk attracting Duchesne’s attention by provoking another blast of the horn. He circled around as quickly as he could, cursing the one-way streets that made him go two blocks out of his way, and passed Nina’s building again. No sign of Duchesne, although his car was still there, blocking the entrance to the parking lot.

  On Mike’s third circuit of Nina’s block, Julien Duchesne popped into view like a jack-in-the-box. It looked as if he’d been kneeling between his car and Nina’s. Fixing a tire, maybe. Once again, traffic forced Mike to keep moving, and by the time he had come around again both Julien and his car were gone. He rang Nina’s buzzer, decided she’s not home and took off, Mike reasoned. Big deal. Still...I guess I’ll hang around a little while longer. Maybe he’ll come back.

  With apologies to Sig for postponing that long run in the park one more time, Mike found a parking space, tilted his cap to keep the afternoon sun out of his eyes and settled in to wait until Nina came home.

  An hour or so later she came home in a cab—for once without either of the Duchesnes shepherding her along. Intrigued, Mike watched her apartment, fighting his desire to ring her doorbell. You’ve been through all that, he told himself sternly. She doesn’t need you complicating her life. And you sure as hell don’t need her complicating yours. So he merely waited and watched, half expecting Julien and Marta Duchesne, Nina’s ever-present shadows, to appear any minute.

  Instead, just as darkness was falling, Nina came through her front door and ran lightly down the steps. Mike caught his breath; she looked so fresh and lovely. Her step was buoyant, and she was smiling. Mike would have given anything to have her run to him with that smile.

  She got into her car and drove off. Mike slipped into traffic and followed, several cars behind hers. She drove around her neighborhood for a few minutes, past a little park, up and down the narrow streets. She even drove past her own house before heading toward the waterfront.

  Mike whistled tunelessly and drummed his fingers on his steering wheel. If this had been an ordinary stakeout, he’d be convinced that the subject was trying to see if she were being tailed. Nina’s circling and backtracking maneuvers were the classic tactic for flushing a surveillance car into the open. But Nina wasn’t a pro. Or was she? Did she have something to hide? Mike was pretty sure that she hadn’t spotted him; he’d stayed well back from her car, keeping the Grand Am out of her field of vision as much as possible.

  Now she was on Delaware Avenue, heading north, picking up speed as she merged with the heavier traffic. Where is she going? At Callowhill Street she steered the car onto a long, curving exit ramp that would take her right into the heart of the deserted warehouse district. In fact, Mike realized, she was headed for the very same part of town where the shooting had occurred. What the hell is she doing? He had a bad feeling that Nina was headed into trouble. Maybe she was going to pick up a drug drop; maybe her errand had something to do with the FBI’s smuggling case. Whatever it was, Mike didn’t want Nina mixed up in it. The last time she was here, she’d nearly been killed—

  Nina’s BMW had pulled ahead of him and was far down the ramp, approaching the turn onto Callowhill. He stepped on the gas.

  * * *

  Nina hadn’t really had a destination in mind. At first she’d thought about driving past the art museum and along East River Drive. But she’d turned around after a block or so, realizing that the scenic drive wouldn’t be very scenic this late in the day. She’d almost gone home, but at the last minute she’d driven to the waterfront instead. She’d cruised past the place where she’d parked with Mike on that first day. She could so easily imagine him sitting there next to her, solid and reassuring—

  “Plans are made to be changed, right?” Nina said aloud. She gunned the car and pulled onto Delaware Avenue, headed north toward the factory district.

  It wasn’t until she was headed down the exit ramp that Nina realized that something was wrong. She had her foot on the brake, but the car wasn’t slowing. Frantically she pumped the brake, but the heavy sports car didn’t slow down. Instead, thanks to the steep incline of the ramp, it was picking up speed. She held down the horn, but she was already too close to the intersection for the traffic there to get out of her way. So Nina did the only thing she could think of. She swerved toward the grass verge of the ramp and yanked on her emergency brake.

  The car bumped over the edge of the roadway and then skidded wildly on the steep, slippery grass slope of the verge. She was sliding downhill now, almost sideways, praying that the car would come to a stop before it reached the row of trees at the bottom of the hill. Suddenly a tree trunk loomed up right in front of her, pale and ghostly in the jouncing beams of her headlights. Nina jerked on the wheel, but the car crashed into the tree with the grinding scream of tearing metal. Nina was jolted forward; she slumped over the wheel and was not even aware that the car had finally come to a halt.

  Chapter 8

  Mike saw the sports car’s brake lights go on and knew right away that something was wrong; Nina’s car was picking up speed as it bore down on the crowded Callowhill Street intersection. He gunned his own engine. The foot of the ramp was blocked with cars stalled in slow traffic. Turn, baby, Mike prayed, don’t run the interse
ction. As soon as her car left the ramp he slammed on his own brakes. He was out of his car before it had stopped moving, running as fast as he could in the wake of Nina’s runaway car. It careened down the slope, leaving a swath of chewed-up turf behind it.

  He didn’t just hear the crash when Nina’s car hit the tree; he felt the impact through the soles of his feet. A few seconds later he was at her door. She was bent over the steering wheel—damn it, why hadn’t her air bag inflated? But she was moving, shaking her head groggily. Mike dared to hope that she was all right. Then he smelled something that sent fear racing along his nerves: the sharp tang of gasoline and the burn of hot metal.

  He tugged at her door handle; it wouldn’t open. Of course not. Nina was a careful driver who always locked all the doors in the car. In a frenzy he pounded on the window, shouting, “Nina! Open up! Open your door!”

  She gazed at him blankly. Clearly she was still stunned from the crash. With no time to waste, Mike drew his gun, stepped back and fired a round through Nina’s left rear window. There was no danger that he might hit her, but he knew that the shot would be as concussive as a blow at such close range. The window shattered into a million rounded pellets, and Mike reached in, stretched his arm past Nina and flipped the door—lock switch to the open position. He opened her door from outside, yanked her out—praying that he wasn’t hurting her by moving her so roughly—and wrapped one arm around her, tucking her head into his shoulder. “Now run, damn it!” he yelled, and pulled her with him as fast as he could move, straight away from the car.

  They’d covered about thirty yards when the car blew. There was a great whomping roar behind them, and a hot blast wave blew them off their feet. Mike rolled on top of Nina and covered her head with his chest and arms. After a few excruciating seconds the worst of the heat had passed; Mike pulled Nina to her feet and dragged her along for another couple dozen yards. As soon as he felt he could breathe without scorching his lungs, he let her collapse to the ground and sank down beside her. Without stopping to think about it he took her in his arms and held her close.

  “Nina,” he murmured into her hair, “talk to me, honey. Tell me you’re all right. Please be all right.”

  She stirred in his arms and then turned her smudged, wide-eyed face up to his. “Mike?” she said incredulously. “Is it really you?”

  She touched him as though she thought she were dreaming, and then her arms twined around his neck and all he could think of was that she was still alive and she was holding him. He kissed her. It was a hard, exultant kiss—a survivors’ kiss, snatched like a trophy out of the hand of death. He felt her yield to him, but when her lips parted under his he forced himself to break away. If the kiss had gone on any longer, he’d have been making love to her right here on Callowhill Street, under the eyes of the excited crowd that had gathered to gape at the wreck.

  Nina was looking at him, and he saw the confusion clear from her eyes.

  “Are you hurt?” he demanded.

  “I—I don’t think so.”

  He moved her arms and legs and looked her over for contusions. Remarkably, she seemed to have come through the accident unscathed. Except maybe for concussion.

  “Did you lose consciousness?”

  “No, I remember everything. I think I just got shaken up.” She climbed unsteadily to her feet. “Oh, my God, look!”

  Her car was blazing like a Yule log.

  “What happened?” Nina asked.

  “I don’t know. It looked to me like your brakes failed.” Mike heard sirens. “The cops are on the way. They’ll do some tests on the car, see if they can find out what went wrong.”

  “I could have been killed. You got me out of the car—I remember that now.” Then she looked around, puzzled, as if the setting and the sequence of events were only just now falling into place. “But what were you doing here?”

  “I was following you,” Mike told her.

  “Following me? But why?”

  Mike had tried for a week to answer that question, and he hadn’t come up with the right answer yet. Because I think I might be in love with you and I’m worried about you and jealous as hell? Because I’m afraid you’re up to something and I want to know what? So instead of answering her question he countered with one of his own. Police cars and an ambulance were screeching to a stop, and he figured he had about thirty seconds or so to interrogate her. Then he’d better fade into the background and let the officers on duty take over.

  “Nina, tell me something. What were you doing here? Where were you going?”

  Her face flushed and she looked away from his gaze. He gripped her arms and shook her gently. “Look at me. Damn it, this is important! Right now you’re one block from where you were shot. I need to know why you came back here.”

  She looked at him then, outraged and accusing. “You think this had something to do with the shooting, don’t you? You still think I’m up to something illegal, and you were hoping to catch me in the act.” She didn’t shout. She didn’t have to; her voice was low and tight with fury. “Well, Novalis, you can go to hell. I don’t have to answer your questions. Just leave me alone.”

  By now the paramedics and police were swarming over the scene, and Nina was swallowed up in the bustle. With a final scornful look over her shoulder at Mike, she submitted to being looked over by a medical technician.

  Mike walked over to where the combined police-fire unit was hosing the bonfire that was Nina’s car with foam.

  “You a witness?” asked one of the officers.

  “Yeah,” said Mike, and showed the guy his badge.

  “What d’you figure happened, Lieutenant? Think she just lost control?”

  “No, I saw her brake lights go on. I think the brakes failed. You’re towing this wreck to the police garage, right?”

  “Sure. Standard procedure in a total flameout like this. One of our mechanics’ll look it over, make a report and then release it to her insurance company.”

  “Do me a favor. Keep my name off your report, will you? I’m here strictly unofficially.”

  The cop gave Mike a quizzical look, but like all good city cops he knew when to keep his mouth shut. “Sure thing. Never saw you.” He closed his notebook.

  “Thanks.” Mike hung around for a little longer on the fringes of the crowd. He saw that Nina was engaged in a spirited argument with the medical technician, and a moment later he drew one of the paramedics out of the crowd, flashed his badge and said, “What’s up with the victim?”

  The young man shrugged. “We keep telling her that she has to go to the hospital, and she keeps saying that she’s fine. She knows her rights, and we can’t make her go. Says she just wants to go home.”

  “You think she’s really all right?”

  The paramedic grinned. “Yeah, she’s okay. She’s one lucky lady.”

  “And pretty stubborn, too. Take my advice—just give up and let her go home.”

  “I guess we will.”

  Mike nodded and melted into the night. He’d have liked to take Nina home himself, but he figured that right now she was too mad at him to get into his car. At least he knew that she hadn’t been hurt in the crash, and that nothing could happen to her now in the middle of a crowd of cops. Besides, he had a job to do.

  * * *

  It wasn’t easy tracking down an off-duty mechanic on Sunday night, but finally Mike traced Gina Donnelly to her sister’s house in New Jersey. Gina was a damned good mechanic who worked full-time in the police garage. She was also one of the few friends Mike still had around the force; she had grown up in Jack Renzo’s old neighborhood and gone to school with his sisters, and unlike some of Jack’s buddies, she had never blamed him for what had happened to Jack.

  “This better be good, Novalis,” she said when she finally came to the phone. “You’re interrupting my niece’s confirmation party.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “and apologize to your niece for me, too. But it’s important, Gina. I need a favor.”
r />   “Don’t tell me that rusted-out piece of junk you drive finally broke down on you? Nah, you wouldn’t call me on a Sunday night about that. What’s up?”

  “I want you to get to work early tomorrow. Real early.”

  Gina groaned.

  “There’ll be a burned-out car in the garage—what’s left of a late-model brown BMW. The accident happened about an hour ago. The driver lost control and hit a tree. She claims she hit the brakes but nothing happened.”

  “So? What do you want from me?”

  “I need your opinion about what might have caused the accident. Did the brakes fail? If so, why? And her air bag didn’t inflate. Why?”

  “You don’t want much, do you?” Gina asked dryly.

  “There’s one other thing. This isn’t my case. So get in early and check the car out, and let me know what you find out, but keep it quiet. I’ll call you at the garage at seven.”

  “What?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important, Gina, you know that.”

  “Yeah, all right. You’ll tell me what this is all about sometime?”

  “Sure.” If I ever figure it out.

  “Okay. Seven.” Before he could thank her, she hung up.

  * * *

  Mike’s phone rang at 6:50 the next morning.

  He picked it up and asked, “That you, Gina?”

  “Yeah. I did what you asked and gave that wreck a going-over. What’s left of it, that is.”

  “What’ve you got for me?”

  “You know, Mike, after a car’s been flamed, there’s not a lot of hard evidence left. I can tell you this much—the accident was definitely caused by brake failure.”

  “And what caused the brake failure?”

  “I know what you’re getting at, but I can’t help you. The brake fluid lines could have been cut. Or maybe not. At this point there’s no way to tell. Sometimes brakes do just go out.”

  “Yeah. And sometimes pigs do fly. What about the air bag?”